Photo By Lori Stewart | Maj. Gen. S. Leroy Irwin served as the Army’s director of intelligence from November...... read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
G-2 CHOOSES CAREER MANAGEMENT OVER INTELLIGENCE CORPS
On 29 March 1949, the Army’s director of intelligence, Maj. Gen. S. Leroy Irwin, quashed discussions about creating an intelligence corps. Instead, he favored an intelligence specialization career management system to help fix the personnel issues Army intelligence had been experiencing since before World War II.
During the war, a detail system allowed officers to volunteer for short intelligence assignments. Many officers, however, found other branch assignments more career-enhancing, leaving the Intelligence Division struggling to find qualified officers for duty in the Division, the military attaché system, and in theater and task force headquarters. In the postwar period, an improvement of the intelligence personnel procurement system was needed, but even senior intelligence leaders failed to agree on a solution. Perhaps a professional intelligence corps equal to other Army branches would attract qualified officers on a permanent basis. Or perhaps better career management of officers wishing to specialize in intelligence would ensure their availability in the event of another war while allowing them to remain in their preferred branches.
The corps concept initially gained support when the November 1945 War Department Plan for Post War Military Establishment directed the Intelligence Division to formulate plans and policies for such an intelligence corps. Few steps, however, were taken on the issue. In late 1946, the House Military Affairs Committee recommended the Army consider the formation of an intelligence corps “for the training, development and assignment of especially qualified officers.” In light of this request, Director of Intelligence Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin was ordered to study such an organization right away. He formed a board, chaired by Colonel L. R. Forney, to do so. Forney’s report, published in January 1947, recommended the immediate formation of an Intelligence Corps made up of both permanently assigned and detailed members. General Chamberlin, however, disagreed. When he forwarded the report to Army Chief of Staff General Dwight D. Eisenhower, he attached his own memo arguing instead for an intelligence specialization career management system. Eisenhower backed Chamberlin.
A year later, in February 1948, a five-man intelligence section, led by Lt. Col. George T. Adair, stood up within the Staff and Administrative Assignments Branch, Career Management Group, Personnel and Administrative (P&A) Division. The section’s responsibilities were to coordinate assignments of regular officers to the Intelligence Division, the military attaché system, Army Language School, Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), and Army Security Agency (ASA) and assist in the “career monitoring of all MI, CIC, and ASA reserve officers.” Adair’s section was buried too deeply in the career management system to be effective. At the end of 1948, General Irwin, who had become the new director of intelligence in November, pointed out the Eisenhower-approved career management program was still non-existent nearly two years later.
In early 1949, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army General J. Lawton Collins announced the “CIC, the ASA and [Intelligence Division] ought to be given considerable priority in the assignment of competent officers and enlisted men.” With this high-level support and a pending increase in the allotment of intelligence officers, on 29 March 1949, General Irwin agreed to the establishment of an Intelligence Career Management Branch on an equal level with other Army branches in the P&A Division. The branch would coordinate with his division to control the intelligence assignments of Regular Army officers. With this system in place, General Irwin declared he saw no need for a permanent intelligence corps, effectively suppressing the idea for years to come.
This solution for the Army’s intelligence personnel procurement problems soon dissolved, however. Ongoing defense strength cuts meant no additional military and civilian personnel spaces were available to man the new career management branch. While another effort to establish the branch occurred in February 1950, it was overcome by the beginning of the Korean War. The establishment of an effective intelligence career management system would have to wait until 1962 when the MI Branch was created.
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| Date Taken: | 03.22.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 03.22.2024 16:29 |
| Story ID: | 466902 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 87 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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